Christmas gifts have been opened, some have even been ruined, and it's just about time for us do the whole really, really overpriced glass of champagne at midnight thing. Oh, it's really not that I'm against the whole New Year's Eve thing, it's just that I'm not sure why I have to pay five times the regular price at a restaurant and ten times the regular price for a concert that is already horribly over-priced. I'm balking at the whole thing this year.
Sunday, December 27:
8:00 - 9:00PM
Nature - “Drakensberg: Barrier of Spears.” The Drakensberg Mountains are, I've been told, "southern Africa's Alps." That sort of statement always makes me wonder why the Alps couldn't be Europe's Drakensberg Mountains. Seriously people, why does it have to be that Africa's mountains are compared to Europe instead of vice versa?
9:00 – 10:00PM
Masterpiece – "Cranford – Episode 2". This is part one of a three-part series and based on the writing of Elizabeth Gaskell. Better than that though, it's about a small, little, tiny, miniature, if you will, English village which, for some reason, "comes to life with gossip, parties, romances, sudden death, bankruptcy, and the railroad."
10:00 – 11:00PM
Augustus Saint-Gaudens: Master of American Sculpture. Though he was an American sculpture (see title of show for verification of this), Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was actually then trained in Paris and Rome. Oh, not to fret, he spent many a year here in the States, he even died in New Hampshire.
Monday, December 28:
8:00 - 9:00PM
Antiques Roadshow – " Jackpot!" This special looks at the various windfalls that people have gotten through the years, you know, buying a bubblegum wrapper for a quarter and it turning out that the bubblegum contained in the wrapper has a fleck of saliva from Gregory Peck and consequently the whole thing is worth 1.2 million dollars, except, of course, you can't sell it on eBay because eBay doesn't traffic in body parts.
9:00 – 10:30PM
American Masters – "Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women." Was Louisa May Alcott the spinsterish woman we have sometimes been led to believe or was she was free thinker who authored works about murderers, cross-dressers, and opium addicts? Is it possible – is it just possible – that maybe she was both?
Article comments
1 - Dyrkness
"why does it have to be that Africa's mountains are compared to Europe instead of vice versa?" Because people are more familiar with the Alps....DUH! Comparisons ALWAYS start with the more familiar.
2 - FitzBoodle
I don't have a chance to preview the PBS offerings, but I must say that the offerings of the past few days have been excellent. Especially the Metropolitan "Tosca", a presentation of "La Boheme, the Movie" with Anna Netrebko sortof as if it were filmed like a movie, and "Damian", the story of Father Damian, the priest to lepers on Molokai about 1880, told in his own words by a single actor.
The "Tosca" is a warhorse, but always satisfying when Tosca plunges the knife into the arch-villain Scarpias chest singing "this is the kiss of Tosca!". Few moments in entertainment are so satisfying. Of course it depends on the Scarpia being sufficiently loathsome.
The "La Boheme..." was fun, being freed of some of the physical constraints of opera staging. Netrebko was maybe too luscious to convince as the stricken Mimi, but wonderful to look at and listen too, also.
"Damian" was told from the standpoint of the deceased priest as he contemplates the contrast between the churches antagonism to his constant fiery struggles on behalf of his lepers, and later canonization when he is dug out of the Hawaiian grave and shipped to his native Belgium. A good introduction to Damians story is the famous Robert Louis Stevenson essay in defense of Damian (easily found on the internet).
We can only hope that the next few days of PBS are as rich.